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Abolitionism in the United States was the movement of the American Civil War to end slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United States. In the Americas and Western Europe, abolitionism was a historical movement to end the African slave trade and set slaves free. Later, in the 17th century, English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian. In the 18th century, perhaps 6 million Africans were taken to the Americas as slaves, at least a third of them in British ships. Abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies. In the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized slavery for violating human rights. James Edward Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery. Oglethorpe banned slavery in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds, argued against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraged his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.〔Wilson, Thomas, ''The Oglethorpe Plan'', 201-206〕 Although anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labor—including the south—continued to do so. After the American Revolution established the United States, northern states, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780, passed legislation during the next two decades abolishing slavery, sometimes by gradual emancipation. Massachusetts ratified a constitution that declared all men equal; freedom suits challenging slavery based on this principle brought an end to slavery in the state. In other states, such as Virginia, similar declarations of rights were interpreted by the courts as not applicable to Africans. During the following decades, the abolitionist movement grew in northern states, and Congress regulated the expansion of slavery in new states admitted to the union. Britain banned the importation of African slaves in its colonies in 1807 and abolished slavery in the British Empire in 1833. The United States criminalized the international slave trade in 1808 and made slavery unconstitutional in 1865 as a result of the American Civil War. The historian James M. McPherson defines an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional, and total abolition of slavery in the United States." He does not include antislavery activists such as Abraham Lincoln or the Republican Party, which called for the gradual ending of slavery. ==The beginnings== The first attempt to end slavery in the English colonies in North America came from Roger Williams and Samuel Gorton, who made slavery illegal in Rhode Island in 1652. In their view, slavery contradicted their Protestant beliefs. However, this anti-slavery law was disregarded in 1700 when the colony became involved in slave trade.〔Jay Coughtry (1981): ''The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807.'' Philadelphia, Pa.〕 In the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson and some of his contemporaries had plans to abolish slavery. Despite the fact that Jefferson was a lifelong slaveholder, he included strong anti-slavery language in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but other delegates took it out.〔Monticello Foundation, 2012〕 Benjamin Franklin, also a slaveholder for most of his life, was a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first recognized organization for abolitionists in the United States. Following the Revolutionary War, northern states abolished slavery, beginning with the 1777 constitution of Vermont, followed by Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Act in 1780. While some of these laws were gradual, these state jurisdictions enacted the first abolition laws in the entire "New World". Other states with more of an economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, also passed gradual emancipation laws, but by 1804, all the northern states had abolished it. Some slaves continued in servitude for two more decades, but most were freed. In addition, individual slaveholders, particularly in the Upper South, manumitted slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population increased from less than one percent to nearly ten percent from 1790 to 1810 in the Upper South as a result of these actions. As President, on March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves and it took effect in 1808, which was the earliest allowed under the Constitution. In 1820, he privately supported the Missouri Compromise, believing it would help to end slavery,〔〔Peterson, 1960 p.189〕 but his views on slavery were complicated, and possibly contradictory . His will freed only a small fraction of Monticello's slaves〔Stanton (1993), https://books.google.com/books?id=K1m1tRlh7xQC&pg=PA147#v=onepage&q&f=false〕 In the 1850s, in the fifteen states constituting the American South , slavery was legal. While it was fading away in the cities and border states, it remained strong in plantation areas that grew cash crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco or hemp. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.〔(Introduction – Social Aspects of the Civil War ), National Park Service〕 American abolitionism was based in the North, and white Southerners alleged it fostered slave rebellion. The white abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers, especially William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society and writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Black activists included former slaves such as Frederick Douglass, and free blacks such as the brothers Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston, who helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.〔Leon F. Litwack and August Meier, eds., "John Mercer Langston: Principle and Politics", in ''Black Leaders of the 19th century'', University of Illinois Press, 1991, pp. 106–111〕 Some abolitionists said that slavery was criminal and a sin; they also criticized slave owners of using black women as concubines and taking sexual advantage of them. The Republican Party wanted to achieve the gradual extinction of slavery by market forces, because its members believed that free labor was superior to slave labor. Southern leaders said the Republican policy of blocking the expansion of slavery into the West made them second-class citizens, and challenged their autonomy. With the 1860 presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln, seven Deep South states whose economy was based on cotton and slavery decided to secede and form a new nation. The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, four more slave states seceded. In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States and all the border states (except Delaware) began their own emancipation programs. Thousands of slaves escaped to freedom behind Union Army lines, and in 1863 many men started serving as the United States Colored Troops. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect in December 1865 and finally ended slavery throughout the United States. It also abolished slavery among the Indian tribes. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abolitionism in the United States」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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